Three Spheres Cascade
by Shay McSudonim
Summary: Snapshots of a different Universe. (Mom/Homeworld/Coolkid Swap AU). Four-shot covering The Return, Jailbreak, Full Disclosure, and Joyride.
1. Chapter 1

AN: If you're the kind of person who can't enjoy something unless you completely understand it, there's like two-thousand words worth of explanatory (and more than slightly spoilery) author's notes at the end of chapter four that you can skip to.

On the other hand, if you'd rather try to figure out what's going on as you read and then compare your interpretation to the author's notes at the end, then that's fine, too. Whatever works best for you.

* * *

The Return

* * *

Steven's fist descended in slow motion towards a countertop. "Gimme the—"

Peedee pushed a bag of frybits towards Steven, and Greg who was standing beside him.

"Oh," said Steven. "Thanks."

"Eh," said Peedee with a shrug. "I saw you guys comin'."

Greg looked around the booth, seeing that it was empty. "Are you closing up all by yourself?" he asked.

"Yeah," Peedee agreed, "it's just me tonight."

"Wow," said Greg, impressed. "That's a lot of responsibility for a kid your age. Your dad must really trust you."

Peedee returned Greg's friendly smile with the flattest stare he could muster. "Don't patronize me, sir," he said.

Conversation effectively killed, the Universes left, Steven throwing a cheerful, "See you, Peedee!" over his shoulder as they walked away.

"So, like I was saying," said Steven, "Pearl's been sending all these holograms here from space, and, when you stab them, they explode into glitter!"

"That sounds… fun?" said Greg, with a worried expression, not really sure what to say. "You know, Steven, I'm not sure if—do you ever feel like this Gem stuff is too much for you?"

"What do you—" Steven began, before the ground shook beneath him, causing him to fall over. "Oof."

All over Beach City, windows shattered from the force the quake, if indeed it had been an earthquake in the first place. Kiki, who'd been working her shift at Fish Stew Pizza, gripped the counter to steady herself. Peedee, who'd been taking out the trash, shielded his eyes as the storefront broke and glass shards went flying. Over on the dunes, Carrie and Jasmine staggered, trying to keep their balance.

"What the hey was that?" asked Greg, straightening up to look around. "Steven?" he asked, seeing his son's attention fixed on something in the distance. Greg turned to look as well, and, indeed, there was an easily recognizable shape visible... but there was absolutely no reason for such a thing to be up in the sky like it was.

"Is that…" asked Steven, "a hand?"

* * *

On the beach Axinite and Rhyolite stood beside a telescope. Axinite was taller than most humans, but he could probably have passed as one, if not for his glossy skin tone. He wore plug earrings, and kept his hair short most of the time. His form was tall and lanky.

Rhyolite was about three fifths as tall as the statue of the temple Fusion. They had had two thighs and two arms, but each of these branched out at the joint, giving them a total of four forearms and four legs. Their hair was loose, wild, shoulder-length, and, while their skin tone was more subdued than Axinite's, their outfit could have given the painted desert a run for its money. They wore cargo pants with zippers around mid-shin, an unzipped hoodie, and all four of their arms were encased in the long sleeves of their jacket. Their gem appeared to be more like a piece of tiling than anything with facets, and was situated in the place where a right ear would normally be. Rhyolite also had gems where a normal person had eyes, but these were perpetually hidden behind their pair of wrap-around sunglasses.

"The Light Cannons should be ready," said Rhyolite, looking down at Axinite, trying to appear confident.

"Guys!" called Steven, running into view, Greg right behind him. "Did you see that thing in the sky?"

"That's a ship," said Rhyolite, grimly. "Betcha five bucks it's Pearl."

"Amethyst said she'd be coming with Homeworld Gems," said Axinite, "and that they'd have all the latest in weapons-tech."

"It's happening," said Greg to himself.

"I want to see," said Steven, not looking nearly as worried as he probably should have been.

Through the telescope, the pink hand looked larger, more threatening, somehow. "Whoa," said Steven.

"Ready," Axinite was saying. "Aim..."

Rhyolite threw a switch, and the Crystalline Trio slid out from under the deck. Next, Rhyolite carefully placed the Light Cannon from Greg's storage locker alongside them.

"…Fire," finished Axinite.

Steven raised the walky-talky that Axinite had handed him. "Heart, Soul, and Rock 'n Roll," he recited.

Passcode spoken, the four cannons charged and fired, forming a helix of white light, which spun and spiraled its way up towards the ship.

The hand ship changed conformation and position, so that the light blasts were absorbed harmlessly by the surface of its palm. When this was accomplished, it promptly resumed its rest position of three curled fingers and one outstretched.

"Nothing," said Rhyolite, who'd picked up the telescope and was holding it up to their own eye to observe the results of their attack. The large astronomy telescope looked like nothing more than a toy in comparison with the massive Gem.

"What now?" asked Greg.

"We fight," said Axinite, miserably. "There's nothing else we can do."

"Then I'd better make a call," said Steven, pulling out his phone.

* * *

"Hello?" said Mayor Dewey, who was sitting wearily at his desk, stealing furtive glances out of his office window every few minutes.

"Mayor Dewey, it's me. Steven Universe!"

"Universe," said the Mayor, relieved. At least he'd get to talk with him one last time. "We've spotted what we presume to be a Homeworld Ship. The militaries of Earth are mobilized and standing by. Are you sure that you still want to go through with this?"

"We're pretty sure that they're only after the Crystal Gems," said Steven. "It wouldn't be right to drag the rest of the Earth into this, not if we can avoid it."

"If you're certain." said the Mayor. "Then good luck, Steven. We've already begun preparations to get the civilians off-planet, or at least out of the city."

* * *

"E-va-cu-ate, E-va-cu-ate," droned the Mayor's campaign van as it rolled through the streets of Beach City, coming to a stop on the boardwalk just outside the arcade.

People gathered around the car, as Mayor Dewey climbed onto the roof. Among the crowd were Koffee and his daughters, Mr. Smiley, Jasmine, Carrie and Sadie, along with Peedee and his dad.

"People," Mayor Dewey began, "I need everyone to consider: evacuation. Evacuation is something we all depend on..."

Not too far away, Rhyolite was stacking bags onto the bed of Greg's truck while Steven watched the Mayor's speech. He glanced back as Axinite and Greg ran up. "Oh, hey," said Steven, "That's a great idea, Dad. You should leave with the rest of—" he paused, seeing his backpack on the ground next to them. "Is that my luggage?"

Greg and Axinite were both obviously distraught as they exchanged a glance.

"Uh," they said.

"Who wants to tell him?" asked Greg.

"Don't look at me," said Axinite, running to hide behind the truck, peeking out from behind the vehicle to observe what would happen next.

Rhyolite sighed, heavily, upon seeing that the buck had been passed to them. "Steven..." they began, "We know you think we never take things seriously. We know that, most times, we treat everything like a big joke. But the truth is, we care about this planet. A lot. And, more importantly, we care about _you_." They handed Steven his megaphone. He glanced down at it, before returning his attention to Rhyolite.

"You represent everything good about Earth, and every day we spend with you shows us, over and over again, all the reasons why we promised to protect it," Rhyolite continued. "You always remind of us of what's really important… and now, you need to do the same for them." They turned him, gently, to face the boardwalk, and Steven saw the chaos going on as everyone scrambled to evacuate.

"If anything goes wrong, you need to be there to protect them," they said, "like your mom once did."

Rhyolite scooped him up into their palms, gazing down at him. "Think you can handle it?" they asked.

Steven nodded. "I won't disappoint you."

"We know," said Rhyolite, with a fond smile.

* * *

The door to Greg's truck slammed, and they were off.

The Crystal Gems waved goodbye as the truck drove off. After it was out of sight, their masks slipped and both wore worried expressions. Axinite held one hand over his heart and gripped Rhyolite's leg for support.

"We did everything we could," said Rhyolite. Their face started to distort a bit, before they caught themselves and shook their head. "All right. Keep it together!" they continued, stomping off to do some last-minute preparations.

* * *

And off in the distance, a procession of cars made its way out of Beach City, headed for safer pastures.

About half the residents of Beach City had chosen to evacuate via Warp Pad and get off planet altogether. The other half had been unwilling to leave their cars and other possessions in what would likely be ground zero for whatever attack was coming, and were heading out to the Warp Port with everything they could cram into their cars, in order to wait and see what would happen.

Greg used a button to adjust the sideview mirror to check on the hand ship. It had gotten closer and appeared larger. This worried him, for the split second of time he had to process it before his thoughts were interrupted.

"Maybe when Pearl gets to Earth, she'll see how nice all the people are and she won't want to hurt anyone," said Steven, watching the telephone lines snake up and down beside them as they drove down the highway.

Greg smiled. "You're just like your mom," he said.

"Yeah?" said Steven.

"Yeah," Greg agreed. "But these other Gems aren't like your mother," he added, once again looking worried. "They're not like Rhyolite or Axinite. They're not going to start caring about people _now_. They didn't the first time they—" He broke off.

"They first time they what?" asked Steven, in curiosity.

Greg gripped the wheel tighter.

"I mean, it was thousands of years ago—it's, it's not like I was there."

Steven tore his gaze away from the window and instead stared at his father in interest.

"The Gems should be telling you all this stuff," said Greg, unconsciously scratching his head. "But, I get it, I mean—they've been trying to put it all behind them—"

"Put what behind them?" asked Steven.

Greg flinched, realizing he'd said too much.

"Dad!" said Steven, urgently, "Put what behind them?"

"The invasion, Steven!" exclaimed Greg. "The Gem invasion of Earth!"

"What?" asked Steven, taken aback.

Greg shrugged helplessly. "All they do is try to forget it ever happened, but… they just can't forgive themselves. Do you understand?

"Look, they were doing something awful to the planet and… your mother couldn't stand it anymore," he continued, hastily, not giving Steven a chance to respond. Steven's mind flashed to when Amethyst had shown him the Kindergarten, and Axinite had told him war stories. "She told me that's why she had to turn on her own kind. She gave up everything just to stop what they started here, and drive the rest of the Gems off of Earth."

"So, s-she saved the world—that's good!" Steven stammered.

"Uh, no such thing as a good war, kiddo," said Greg, shaking his head. "Gems were destroyed, and people too. In the end, your mother could only save a handful of her closest friends. If it weren't for her Mirror, man, I don't know..."

He caught Steven's distraught expression and scrambled to recover. "B-but, hey, let's look on the bright side! We're gonna drive by that waffle place in a couple miles..."

"We gotta go back," Steven realized. "Turn the car around!"

"No way," said Greg, "the Gems don't want you going back!"

"I know they're just trying to protect me," said Steven, "but, I have to protect them. I have mom's Mirror. They need me!"

"I need you, too!" exclaimed Greg.

Please, dad," Steven pleaded, "what if they get hurt?"

Greg twitched in stress, but he kept his eyes on the road.

"Dad, turn around," said Steven.

Greg did not.

"Dad!"

Steven scowled. "Turn the car around—please!" That last word was punctuated with a punch to the dashboard, which, unfortunately, set off the passenger's side airbag.

Steven instinctively put up his bubble, and was forced out the window and onto the ground, where the bubble popped, leaving Steven lying on the dirt.

Greg's car skidded sideways to a halt and he ran out to check on his son. "Steven!" Greg exclaimed.

"Dad," said Steven, weakly.

"Yo, Greg," called Mr. Fryman, "Are you and your kid okay?"

The citizens of Beach City were visible up on the road, peering worriedly down at the pair of them.

"Yeah, yeah! We're fine, we're fine!" said Greg, placing an arm around Steven and helping him to stand.

"Dad, please, I have to go back," said Steven, tearing up, "I have to. They don't have my Mirror. Do, do you understand?"

"Yeah, okay," said Greg, smiling sadly as he wiped the tear tracks from Steven's face, "Just be careful, alright? Or I'm gonna run fresh out of family."

Steven smiled in return. "Stay with everyone and keep them safe," he instructed. "I'll figure out some way to get back to Beach City," Steven said, just as a white paw set itself down on his hair, mushing it flat.

He turned to see Lion standing just behind him, his snowy coat and mane a welcome sight.

"Oh," said Steven, "This'll work!"

From atop Lion's back, Steven watch the landscape fly by. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number, listening to the phone on the other end ring.

"Come on," said Steven, "Pick up."

"You've reached the Maheswaran residence," said the answering machine. Steven groaned in disappointment. "Please leave a message after the beep. And keep it short."

"Hey, Lucy, it's Steven," he began. "Just seeing what you were up to. Uh, don't know if you knew, but there's some crazy stuff going on with a giant space hand and we all might die so, uh, I guess call me back when you get this and I'll talk to you soon, uh, bye!

As they came into sight of the lighthouse, Lion made a portal that brought them straight down to the beach in front of the temple. The ship had gotten so close that entire scene was bathed in pink light.

Steven climbed down off Lion's back to see that Rhyolite and Axinite had formed Granite in his absence. The gigantic Gem had pulled out their weapon and was batting laser balls up at the ship. The attack was considerably more powerful than the Light Cannons had been, but still had no effect on the ominous vessel.

"Stay here," Steven told Lion, remembering his father's words from earlier. "If something happens, Dad'll need a new son."

Then, final instructions dispensed, he ran over to join the Crystal Gem, just as the ship started its final descent towards the beach.

Granite sighed. "Well, we may be about to die… but at least Steven's safe."

"Hey guys!" said Steven.

With a cry of surprise, the Fusion split apart into Rhyolite and Axinite. "Steven!" said Rhyolite, "You came back!"

"What are you doing?!" screeched Axinite, "Get out of here!"

"It's too late," said Rhyolite, shifting their hulking form between Steven and the incoming ship. "Just stay behind us!"

The ship hovered above the water, sending out ripples as the whole vessel rolled over. Its fingers uncurled, landing on the beach and sending up a massive cloud of sand. As it cleared, they saw a pink sphere emerge from the center of the palm, and roll down to rest on one of the fingers, before opening to reveal four gems: Pearl, two slightly shorter gems, and behind them, looking down at the ground, was Amethyst.

"That's them, Ruby," said Pearl, giving the Crystal Gems a dirty look. "They're the ones that keep disrupting my holograms."

"This is it?" said the Gem on the left, the one wearing a headband. Presumably, she was Ruby.

"They certainly don't look like much of a threat," added the Gem on the right. She was floating in midair, her long legs crossed underneath her.

"Sapphire!" said Pearl. "They keep throwing my plans off schedule!"

Sapphire sighed. "Looks like another waste of our time."

"Hey," said Ruby, grabbing Amethyst by the arm, "Get over here, deserter."

Amethyst's eyes found Steven's.

"Amethyst," he said, softly.

"Is this their base?" Sapphire asked.

"Yeah," said Amethyst, reluctantly.

"That's right," said Axinite, manifesting his weapon, "It's _our_ base. So the rest of you can step off!"

"Yeah, Earth forever!" proclaimed Rhyolite.

The four Homeworld Gems leapt down to the sand, Ruby dragging Amethyst down with them.

"Neither of you saw Selenite?" asked Sapphire, still floating in midair. "Oh, what a shame. I'd hoped to meet her. I was looking forward to beating her into the ground." This was said in a perfect monotone, causing Steven to flinch.

"But this is all that's left of her army?" Sapphire continued, "A flawed reject and this abomination?" Her eye fell upon Steven. "Hmm?" she said, "What's that?"

Steven hid back behind Rhyolite's leg.

"It calls itself, 'The Steven,'" Pearl explained.

"He's human," said Amethyst, hurriedly, "Nothin' to worry about. I-if you destroy the others, it'll probably just run away, and—"

"We know what a human is," Ruby assured her, before turning to her fellow Homeworld Gem.

"Pearl, you overreacted. Again," she said. "This bunch is nothing that you can't handle with the weapons on the ship." The red Gem stomped back to face the water, her limb-enhancers leaving deep footprints in the sand.

"But I—but they—oh fine," said Pearl, annoyed, her eyes overlaying with numbers as she assumed control over the ship's weapon's systems.

"Steven!" said Rhyolite, sensing that things were about to go very south very quickly. "Get out of here!"

"No!" protested Steven.

"You don't need to die for our mistakes!" said Rhyolite.

"But this is my home," said Steven, "and you're both my family!" The two Gems looked touched, but still very much afraid.

"Firing," said Pearl, and a beam of light shot towards them.

"I'm—I'm a Crystal Gem too!" said Steven, as he ran forward to place himself between the blast and the other two Gems, the gem on his wrist glowing as he did so.

When the dust cleared, there stood a Mirror that easily redirected the laser back into the ship which had fired it, protecting Steven and the two Gems from the weapon, and dealing serious damage to the enemy vessel.

Sapphire, upon seeing a large section of her ship explode, turned back to observe the aftermath, her eye going wide in recognition.

"That Mirror," she said.

"That symbol," said Ruby.

"You," said Sapphire, "You're Selenite."

"What was that about 'overestimating my enemy' again?" asked Pearl, obviously feeling vindicated.

"Fire a barrage," ordered Ruby, ignoring her, "Widespread."

Pearl nodded, and a laser raked the beach, missing the Crystal Gems as they dodged, but destroying the landscape.

"Selenite," said Sapphire, mildly shocked and disgusted, "Why do you look like that? What did you do to yourself?"

"Don't hurt him!" said Amethyst.

"You," said Ruby. "You _knew_ about this!"

"So?" said Amethyst. "I did what you told me to do! I played my part in the mission!"

"Forget about the mission," Sapphire cut in.

"What?!" said Pearl, outraged.

"Rose Quartz needs to see this… thing," Sapphire continued, which mollified Pearl a great deal.

"Uh, Uhh…" Steven stammered.

Behind him, Rhyolite emerged from the sand where they'd fallen, after knocking Steven out of the path of the laser. The expression on their face was absolutely enraged. They drew themselves up to their full height and took a menacing step towards Sapphire.

"Not so fast," said Ruby, stepping in front of Sapphire and manifesting her weapon, which appeared to be some sort of gauntlet. She blocked Rhyolite's first attack, deflecting it harmlessly off into the sand.

"Steven, run!" said Rhyolite, manifesting their nunchucks as they readied themselves to rush at the Homeworld Gems once more.

"Prime the Gem Destabilizer," Sapphire ordered. Ruby nodded and pulled out a weapon that made Pearl and Amethyst both flinch back unconsciously.

Rhyolite, tired of beating about the bush, raised two massive feet, using the others for balance, and brought them down square on Ruby and Sapphire like a falling chair.

The instant their foot touched the weapon in Ruby's hand, however, their entire body glowed with a sickly yellow light. Rhyolite stepped back, and then began to, quite literally, fall to pieces on the sand.

Axinite was retching in disgust and horror, and Steven could only watch as Rhyolite poofed and three gems fell to the sandy beach.

Sapphire, having dodged the attack, floated over to a trembling Steven. "I was there, you know," she said, "at the first war for this cracked and crumbling planet. I viewed you as a rival. I studied your tactics. But this?" She picked Steven up by his shirt. "…is just sick."

"Let him go!" said Axinite, rushing over, weapon drawn.

"I can't see what you're planning, Selenite," said Sapphire, as Steven continued to struggle. "You damaged our ship, that much is true… but look. Your base is taken. Your armies are ruined. You have failed."

She dropped Steven.

Ruby's barehanded punch caught him on the way down to the ground, and everything went dark.


	2. Chapter 2

Jailbreak

* * *

In the darkness, there was a pulse. It wasn't like a heartbeat, though. No, this was more like a bass line. Were Rhyolite and his dad jamming on the beach? He should wake up and join them. They always had so much fun whenever they…

But his thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a voice calling out to him.

"Steven," said the voice. "Steven! Wake up, little dude!"

Steven's eyes snapped open.

A pink ceiling met his eyes. Steven groaned and rolled over, pushing himself to his knees as he looked around in worry and confusion.

"Hello?" he called. "Anyone here? Axinite?" A memory flash of three gems falling to the beach came back to him.

Steven gasped. "Rhyolite," he said, finally pulling himself to his feet. "Where are they?" he asked himself, moving to the cell door, looking to see where he'd been taken.

"Whoa," said Steven, as the rest of the place came into view.

Judging by the pink everywhere, he was betting that they were on the ship. Other cells were visible, some of which also looked occupied. What looked like power conduits snaked across the ceiling, and a door at the end of the hall had a diamond design inlaid into its surface. The sound of rhythmic thunking reached his ears, but Steven wasn't sure what to make of it. Whatever it was, that sound was definitely unsettling.

Steven turned his attention, instead, to the force field in front of him. He placed his palms on it and found them repulsed with a light sting. Determined to continue the experiment, he closed his eyes, turned away, and stuck a finger into the field. When nothing happened but a return of the light pins-and-needles feeling, Steven opened his eyes, fascinated to see the force field streaming around his finger.

"Ew," said Steven, seeing yellow veins of light work their way up his arm as he stuck his entire hand through. "Cool," he decided, seeing this as an overall win, taking the plunge and stepping through the field himself.

"Whoa-hoa-hoa-hoa," he gibbered. It was a decidedly weird feeling, going through the field, but if it meant getting out, it was a small price to pay…

…and then he was through. "I'm out," said Steven. "Whohoo!" he cheered.

"Okay, where are the others?" Steven took off at a run, muttering "Gotta find them, gotta find them, gotta find them," to encourage himself as he went.

He stopped abruptly as he passed an occupied cell. It contained a tall Gem who wore sunglasses.

He was reclined against the wall of his cell, throwing something round and jagged against corner where the floor met the wall across from him, and then catching it again. Steven realized that this must be the source of the thunking sound he'd heard earlier.

"Uh, hello?" asked Steven.

The Gem inclined his head, and resumed throwing what Steven now realized was a gear at the wall, in a solitaire version of catch.

"Are you okay?" asked Steven.

"Are any of us really okay?" returned the Gem, morosely. "You think you've got something worthwhile—you think you've found people worth protecting… and what do the Diamonds do? They show up, and they take it all away. It's all a cycle, kid: the Circle of Destruction. It happens over," thunk, thunk, "and over," thunk, thunk, "and over again. And nothing we do can ever stop it..."

"Um," said Steven, hesitantly, "Do you… need any help?"

With that simple question, the Gem seemed to be shaken, at least momentarily, out of his funk.

"Well, that depends," said the Gem, now looking steadily at Steven, "Got any way to get me out?"

"Oh," said Steven, "Well, I just kind of," he reached a hand out towards the field on the Gem's cell.

"Hang on," said the Gem hurriedly. "You don't…"

And then the force field was streaming around Steven's hand, partially blocked. "… have to," the Gem finished, staring, as Steven removed his hand.

Curious, the Gem attempted to touch the field himself, but recoiled at the contact in obvious pain.

"Ah, f—" he began, before remembering that Steven was still there. "Fudge," the Gem corrected himself, grimacing. "Well, that didn't work."

At that moment, the lights flickered, and a pulsing beat like the one from Steven's dream echoed through the hallways.

"I've heard this before," said Steven.

The Gem tilted his head, listening as well. "Sounds like Calcite's here, too," he said, smiling faintly before turning back to Steven. "Think you can make the gap big enough for me to get through?" he asked.

"One doorway, coming right up!" announced Steven, stepping partially into the field and stretching his arm out to form a larger opening.

From a running start, the Gem slid out across the floor and hit the opposite wall with a quiet "ow." The Gem then pulled himself to his feet and sighed in relief.

"Hey," the Gem said, in greeting.

"Hey," he returned, "My name's Steven. What's yours?"

"Slate," answered the matte gray Gem, straightening his sunglasses.

The beat continued for a few moments, before the power shorted out completely. It came back up a second later.

Slate shook his head. "Classic Calcite," he muttered, and headed off in the direction that the sound seemed to be coming from.

"Are they your friend?" asked Steven, tagging along. "I'm looking for my friends too!"

"Yeah," Slate answered. "There's four Gems I gotta find. First is Axinite—"

"I know Axinite!" said Steven, excitedly. "Were you two friends on Homeworld?"

"Sort of," said Slate. "We were in the same division during the revolution. Then there's Calcite," the lights flickered again, "and Flint."

"I haven't met them," Steven admitted, "But I'm sure they're great!"

"… and once we have those two, we should be able to get Rhyolite," Slate finished.

Steven's eyes turned to stars. "You know Rhyolite, too?" he asked. "Are you… are you a Crystal Gem?" he asked.

Slate shrugged. "Yeah," he answered, "But I haven't been around for the last couple years, so I'm a little behind on the times."

"Don't worry!" said Steven. "I'm sure we'll find our friends! And we'll do it together!"

He ran into Slate, who had stopped abruptly. "What is it?" he asked.

"Hold up," said Slate. "We gotta do something first."

"Okay," said Steven, uncertainly. He took the opportunity to steal a glance out the window at the Earth below. It looked a lot smaller from all the way up in space, that was for sure.

"Hey," he heard Slate say. "So, how's the Homeworld treating you?"

"Shut up," returned a familiar voice. "Just leave me alone."

Steven rushed over, hoping that it was really who he thought it was.

"Amethyst!" he called happily, in greeting.

The purple Gem flinched within her cell. "H-hey, Steven."

"Amethyst," said Steven, "I can get you out!"

Amethyst's face crumpled in guilt, "And why would you do that, Steven? Don't you _get_ it? I betrayed you to Homeworld! I turned you in to save myself!"

Steven shook his head. "I know you didn't want to! But Pearl captured you, and threatened to do bad things if you didn't, right?"

Amethyst rubbed her gem, unconsciously, "Yeah," she admitted.

"And you still sent off a message warning us that they were coming, didn't you? Steven prompted.

"Well, _yeah_ ," agreed Amethyst, gaining a bit of conviction, before looking embarrassed. "I didn't want you to get hurt, or nothin.'"

"And I don't want _you_ to get hurt," said Steven, stepping into the field.

"Amethyst, please," he said, his voice distorted by the wall of energy, "come with us."

Amethyst glanced at Slate, who shrugged, as if to say that he didn't have a stake in her choice, one way or another.

She took a breath to steady herself, then Amethyst rolled through the gap in the field, ending in a crouch.

"Yeah!" said Steven, leaving his position as living doorway and pumping his arms in victory. "Go, Amethyst!" he cheered.

"Come on," Steven said, "Let's go find the others!"

Amethyst shook her head. "Sorry, Steven," she said, "But I have a score to settle with Pearl. I'll catch up with you."

"But, Amethyst!" protested Steven. But before he could say anything else, she was gone.

"She'll be back," said Steven to Slate, "right?"

Slate merely shrugged.

"Yeah, no," said a new voice, in disgust, "she ain't never comin' back."

Steven and Slate both turned to see who had spoken.

"Hey, guys!" said a new Gem. This one was glossy black. She wore elbow-length gloves and her gem was in the place where a human's right eye would normally be.

"Flint," said Slate, cracking a fully-fledged smile for the first time since Steven had met him. "How'd you get out?" he asked.

She laughed, "Oh, you know," she said, with a dismissive gesture, "Waited for the power to blip, then blasted the cell's generator," she said, stepping forward and offering Slate a high five.

He slapped her raised hand with his own, though their hands remained clasped after they had finished.

"Nice," Slate said. "Now we just need Calcite."

"And Rhyolite and Axinite," Steven reminded him.

Flint dropped Slate's hand and turned to crouch down to Steven's level. "Well, hello there!" she said. "I don't believe we've met?"

"Steven Universe," he said. "You're Flint, right?"

She swept him up into a hug. "That's right! Oh, you have no idea how long I've wanted to do this!"

"Crush me?" asked Steven.

"Yes!" agreed Flint, spinning around in a circle, before depositing Steven gently back onto his feet.

"It's… nice… to meet you…" said Steven, staggering a bit as he regained his balance.

"Come on," said Slate, "It should be this way." With that, the three of them set out.

Steven, once again reminded of their purpose, took point, leading them down the corridor which Slate had indicated. At the sound of voices, they all pressed themselves against the wall, hoping not to be noticed.

"Are you absolutely sure we need to leave _right this second?_ " Pearl was saying, in exasperation, as she followed Ruby and Sapphire down the hallway. "I mean, checking on the Cluster would take all of three hours…"

Sapphire floated to the ground before a prison cell, the field of which was twitching and spluttering erratically, though, unfortunately, never completely failing. The musical beat was sounding louder than ever.

Frost appeared and coated the entire inside of the cell, and even a good few feet outside of it. "Stop that," ordered Sapphire, in the same monotone she always used.

"Harsh, dudette," came a voice from inside the cell, but the flickering did, indeed, stop.

"Selenite takes priority," answered Ruby, who looked more than a little unenthused about the sudden addition of ice to the hallway. She made to stalk off dramatically to the bridge, but the heat of her footsteps melted a section of the floor and she slid a good foot or so before managing to catch herself against the wall. "Come on, Sapphy, you've made your point," said Ruby, brushing herself off.

The ice retreated to just inside the cell field. "Sorry Ruby," said Sapphire. "Let's go home, then, shall we?" She offered an arm to Ruby and the two of them left the immediate vicinity.

When she was alone, Pearl sighed. "You know I'd do anything for you, Rose," she said to herself, "But I'm more than ready to just be _done_ with this," she said, also leaving the cell area.

When Pearl was out of sight, Flint stuck her head around the corner, checking to make sure the Homeworld Gems were really gone. "Clear!" she said, and they all made their way to the cell.

The prisoner within was now visible—as visible as he ever was, at least, for the new Gem was actually completely transparent. It was obvious where he was—because of the doubling distortion effect that he had on the light which passed through him—but if you weren't looking for him, he was surprisingly inconspicuous. Steven couldn't even tell where his gem was.

"Hey," said Steven, quietly. "I like your music. Are you Calcite?"

"Steve-man, you escaped!" crowed the Gem, "Yeah, that's me!"

"Calcite, disrupt the power again," said Flint, as her gem began to glow. "I should be able to get you out of there."

"Hang on," said Slate, "There's an easier way. Steven?"

"Right," said Steven, rolling up his sleeves as he stepped forwards into the barrier. "Steven: two," he said, forming a gap large enough for Calcite to crawl through. "Force fields: zero."

He steped out of the field, and turned to see the three Gems locked in a group hug. "Aww," said Steven.

The trio pulled apart slightly so that they could talk. "We're gonna need more space," said Calcite.

"For what?" asked Steven. The three broke the hug completely and smiled together at Steven.

"Duh, for our sweet reunion dance party," said Flint. "What else?"

Steven was skeptical. "Shouldn't that wait until we get off the ship?"

"Not necessarily," said Slate. "Come on, I know a place that will probably work." He set off at a run, Calcite followed, as did Flint, after scooping Steven up into a princess carry.

"Whoa," said Steven, as the walls flashed past.

They stopped in a massive atrium. The dome overhead was cracked, probably from the laser Steven had redirected on the beach, but it was still quite serviceable.

"Yeah!" said Calcite, "now this is more like it!"

"But we still need to find Axinite," said Steven, "And Rhyolite, too."

The three Gems looked slightly nervous.

"Steven," said Calcite. "About that. We have something that we need to tell you."

"Okay," said Steven, "What is it?"

Flint moved her hand up so that two fingers framed her glowing gem, which was where one would normally find a right eye. Slate slid his glasses down to reveal that his now slightly glowing gem was where a human's left eye would usually be. Calcite's gem glowed as well, making it visible. It was where a human would have a right ear.

"Look familiar?" Calcite asked.

And, indeed, it was… _incredibly_ so. It took Steven only a second to make the connection. "Rhyolite," he said, in wonder. "Are you guys…?"

"And a one," said Slate.

"And a two," said Flint.

"And one, two, three, fuse!" said Calcite.

The three began to dance, looking and sounding more like teenagers shouting themselves hoarse in a mosh pit than they did millennia-old Gem aliens. This impression was not helped by the lights flickering on and off in a strobe-like effect. The three of them looked ecstatic throughout the process, though, and in seconds their forms were lost in a rush of light, as a familiar Gem appeared before him.

"Steven!" said Rhyolite, grinning broadly, "Thanks for the save!"

"…Rhyolite," Steven finished. "You're a Fusion?" he asked, his eyes turning to stars.

"Yeah," Rhyolite finished, awkwardly. "Sorry we never told you. There never seemed to be a good time…" They broke off, looking suddenly vulnerable.

Steven didn't notice Rhyolite's discomfort. "I actually met your Gems," he said, a little awed at the realization, "… did I make a good first impression?" he asked, a bit worriedly.

Rhyolite smiled, and brushed a hand reassuringly down his arm. "The best," they assured him.

For a moment, the two held each other's gazes.

"Where is he?!" came a furious outburst from down the corridor.

"It's Ruby," said Rhyolite. "And probably Sapphire, as well. Steven, you need to find Axinite. Get Amethyst, too, if you can, and get to the Control Bridge."

"But I don't know where any of that is," said Steven.

Rhyolite snapped their fingers, and a ball of light appeared. Steven touched it, and it vanished. As he looked around the ship, a few of the paths appeared more interesting than the others.

"Do what feels right, little man," said Rhyolite.

"Funky Flow," said Steven, marveling that Rhyolite had, once again, shared their ability with him. He turned to start, but paused. "Wait," he said, "Are you gonna be able to beat them on your own?"

Rhyolite laughed. "Don't need to beat 'em! We just need to stall."

Steven nodded in determination, then headed off down the rightmost corridor.

A few seconds later, Sapphire and Ruby made their entrance, limb-enhancers clanking on the floor as they skidded to a stop.

"Oh great," said Ruby, in exasperation. "This is just perfect!" she said, punching a wall in frustration and leaving scorch marks.

"So you're all out," Sapphire observed, "and you're fused again? Why? Fusion is just a cheap tactic to make weak Gems stronger…"

"Excuse us?" said Rhyolite, the fond expression they'd worn when talking to Steven sliding completely off their face. Their lower jaw hinged opened in a growl, revealing mask-like quality of their outer face. "You come to our planet, you displace our humans, you hurt our family, and now, on top of all that, you think you can tell us whether or not we can _fuse_?"

"Oh," said Sapphire, dismissively, "by all means, stay fused… but it won't do you any good. I've seen it. You may have vague precognition, but I can see the future," she finished, practically inflecting the last part of the sentence. "There isn't a single thing you can do in this fight to beat the both of us. Ruby and I are unstoppable. And do you know what? We don't need to fuse to defeat you. Because we're already stronger than you'll ever be."

"None of your component Gems are fighters," Ruby pointed out. "Fusing doesn't turn you into something you aren't… no matter how many failures you cram together… in the end, all you have is a giant wad of failures."

Rhyolite laughed.

And laughed.

And kept laughing. It was a full minute before they stopped. "Good one," said Rhyolite. "But consider this: loyalty doesn't magically turn its object into something that it's not. It doesn't matter how long or how faithfully you serve Homeworld. They'll never see you as anything but disposable. And they'll never see the universe as anything but material for making more Gems. It doesn't matter whether or not you can defeat us, because no matter how well you serve… Pink Diamond will never care."

Rhyolite swept a pair of arms across their body for emphasis. "You'll serve the Homeworld until you crack," they said, "and you'll never receive more than insincere thanks for your trouble."

"Well, of course you would think so, traitors," said Sapphire. "But—" her rebuttal was cut off as the ship lurched. "What?" asked Sapphire, catching herself.

"We don't need to beat you," Rhyolite explained, looming over Ruby and Sapphire, "We just need to win."

With that, they unfused and took off at a run, Ruby and Sapphire in close pursuit.

* * *

On the Control Bridge, Steven was sitting next to the security screens watching Rhyolite split into Slate, Flint, and Calcite and then scatter, leading the two Homeworld Gems on a chase. Ruby followed Flint, and Sapphire followed Calcite.

"Don't touch that!" Pearl was saying. "You'll crash and kill us all!" Amethyst's whip wrapped around the Homeworld Gem, pinning her arms to her sides.

"You've got this, Axinite!" Amethyst called.

"No, I don't," said Axinite, his eyes glazed over with numbers as his hands submerged in the light display and the ship lurched again. "No, you stupid hunk of ship, go _down_!"

In the distraction, Pearl formed a hologram, which cut her free, and then activated an escape pod.

"Oh no you don't!" said Amethyst, tackling Pearl as the escape pod formed around them. The two of them shot from the ship, still fighting within the pod as they fell to Earth.

"Amethyst!" cried Steven in dismay.

"She'll be fine! Worry about us!" said Axinite, before turning back to the navigation panel to try and figure out the ship's controls.

* * *

Flint, after running down a few hallways, to what she estimated to be one of the inner decks of the ship, let loose the charge she'd been building and laser-blasted the ceiling, blocking the hallway with rubble.

"Aargh!" screeched Ruby in frustration. "What's your problem?" she called to Flint, as she began to hurl fireballs at the blockage.

Flint, rather than doing the sensible thing and running, smirked at Ruby through a gap that the red Gem had created in the wall made mostly out of pieces of the ceiling, and began to sing.

" _Honey, I was designed to work down in the mines,"_ said Flint. _"Never thought even once I'd get free. So I hid in the ground, lived on Earth, messed around, and what did I finally see? A Mirror, and in it was me."_

With that, Flint judged that the time was right to leave, and took off running again. She was joined by Slate, and the two began a duet that was almost a chant.

" _Weld, Sort,"_ began Flint. _"Quench, Report. Bow, Exhort. Delegate, Retort."_

" _I'm a technician,"_ sang Slate, _"a quick transistor. One tiny node in a vast array. When I was broken,_ _I was discarded. Now, to the Homeworld, here's what I say:_

" _I'm a technician."_

 _("Weld. Sort.")_

" _I built your starships."_

 _("Quench. Report.")_

" _You think I'm useless and nothing more?"_

 _("Bow. Exhort.")_

" _Well, that's your error."_

 _("Delegate.")_

" _Now quake in terror."_

 _("Retort.")_

" _Because the techies? We_ won _that war."_

The two fused with a flash, not even breaking stride, and put on an additional burst of speed as they ran off, Ruby in hot pursuit.

* * *

Calcite had run down to the ship's engines and then killed the lights. Sapphire dared not use too much ice while she couldn't see, lest she risk damaging the ship still further. _"You know, a servant doesn't speak,"_ sang Calcite, from the darkness.

( _"They just make lights and act in jest,")_ sang an unfamiliar voice that wasn't Ruby or Pearl.

" _You know, a servant doesn't sing,"_ continued Calcite.

 _("They have to work while masters rest.")_

" _And, well, a servant doesn't think."_

 _("For it would crack their pretty gem.")_

" _That was before we fought a war. We're not on Homeworld anymore,"_ sang Calcite. Something arced in the darkness and Sapphire took aim, only to see a flare of fire shoot towards it first. Ruby was here, too?

" _I've taken time find myself,"_ Calcite went on. _"I've taken time to learn my place. And, if I still act as a servant, now I serve the human race._

" _They hold that music is an art. They know that lives exist to save They fuse for matters of the heart. We broke their world, and they forgave._

" _Their cities glow. Their people grow. They all know things you'll never know. So, come and try. You'll never win. We stopped you once—we will again."_

Sapphire ghosted over to where she estimated Ruby should be, and tapped her on the shoulder. Ruby clasped her arm, then patted it, moving to stand at a guard position. They readied themselves for an attack.

Just then, however, there was a flash of light which was obviously from a fusion. The lights came back up, and Rhyolite was, once again, whole, and spinning their nunchucks, while lights along the stick's side formed circular pictures as it blurred in motion: a gear, the earth, a smiley face...

"For all the Homeworld claims to give," said Rhyolite, their jaw unhinged, not once, but twice, giving them a total of three mouths, and three voices to work with. "Do either of you truly live?" they continued, looking directly at Ruby and Sapphire.

"You'll never fuse outside a fight," said Rhyolite, using Slate's voice.

"You'll never watch the rain at night," said Rhyolite as Calcite.

"While you destroy, we three atone," said Rhyolite as Flint.

"We stand as one. You stand alone," said Rhyolite as all three of their components.

Rhyolite swung their weapon directly into the ship's engines.

Immediately afterwards, Rhyolite shrunk themselves and took off running again from a newly reunited Ruby and Sapphire, as well as from the explosion they had just created.

* * *

"The ship is going down!" announced Rhyolite, who had shapeshifted themselves down to about eight feet tall to fit into the ship's corridors, ducking as they entered the control bridge, narrowly dodging shots of ice and fire from Ruby and Sapphire, who were right behind them.

"Rhyolite!" said Steven and Axinite. "You're okay!" continued Steven in relief.

Rhyolite winced as the door started to melt behind them. "Yeah, but when the ship crashes, none of us are gonna stay that way!"

"On it!" said Steven. "Group hug!"

Axinite groaned, pulling himself away from the dashboard. Rhyolite smiled widely, shrinking themselves still further.

When the ship crashed into the beach, it exploded into hunks of flaming pink metal.

Lion ran over the sand, searching the wreckage for his friend. When he reached the piece of debris that felt most like Steven, he let loose a sonic roar, which cleared away the broken pieces of the ship and revealed Steven, Rhyolite, and Axinite, all safe within a translucent bubble.

The bubble popped.

"Nice," said Rhyolite.

"Oh my gosh," said Steven. "I can't believe you're a Fusion all the time!"

"You met the trio, huh?" said Axinite.

"Yeah, they're really cool!" Steven gushed. "How come you've never unfused before?"

Rhyolite shrugged. "Casual fusion isn't allowed on Homeworld. The novelty value hasn't worn off yet, so the three of them fuse whenever they can. Also, my… components... don't seem to think that they're very good role models. They're wrong, by the way, but they made me promise not to unfuse. At least, not until your next birthday."

Steven frowned. "Wait, are you saying that after that I won't see you anymore?" he asked, in dismay.

"No, no," Rhyolite assured him, "you will… but you'll probably also see a lot more of Slate, Flint, and Calcite… along with Feldspar, Marble, and Limestone."

Steven was curious. "Who are they?"

"They're the three different Fusions you get when only two of them fuse at a time," Axinite explained, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"And, of course, we're always open to forming Granite," said Rhyolite, with a grin in Axinite's direction.

Axinite scoffed. "Yeah, I think I'll pass."

Rhyolite and Steven laughed at the expression on his face.

But the lighthearted moment was quickly broken, as a gout of flame destroyed a nearby section of the wreckage. Ruby emerged, looking positively volcanic, and Sapphire wasn't far behind, dusting herself off.

"Don't think you've won," said Sapphire. "We were going to let you fight us, to truly give it your all… so that when you inevitably lost, you would have regained some of your honor."

"But now?" said Ruby, "You pranced around stalling for time, and we're all out of patience. We _were_ going to bring you back to Homeworld in chains," said Ruby.

"But now?" said Sapphire, "I think I'd rather bring you back in _pieces_."

Ruby held out a hand to Sapphire. "For Homeworld?"

Sapphire smiled lightly, and took it. "For Homeworld," she agreed.

"Oh no," said Steven, in small voice. Beside him, Axinite looked incredibly worried, and Rhyolite was just remembering to shift themselves back up to their full height, in preparation for the inevitable fight.

On the beach, Ruby and Sapphire danced a formal Waltz, two short cycles of three beats, before spinning off into a symmetrical pose… and forming into their Fusion.

Though the Fusion was made of only two Gems, their limb-enhancers made them almost as massive as Rhyolite. Beside Steven, Axinite swallowed nervously.

Unexpectedly, though, the new Fusion was considerably less hostile than either Ruby or Sapphire had been. In fact, if one had to choose which emotion was dominant in her expression, the obvious answer would have been 'shock.' A remarkably vulnerable emotion, considering she'd been formed to kill them all.

"I…" said the Fusion, shaking her head, full sentences beyond her for the moment.

"Ruby?" said Steven. "Sapphire? Are you okay?"

"Garnet," the Fusion corrected him, softly. "Our name… it's Garnet."

"Okay, Garnet," said Steven. "Are you okay?"

"I… We…" the newly-formed Gem struggled with the sentence, "…I didn't know it would feel like this."

Rhyolite chuckled nervously. "Yeah," they said, "It's a rush, isn't it?"

"It's…" said the Fusion, but words failed her. A single tear ran down her cheek.

She shook her head, clenching her fists. The Crystal Gems tensed.

"I'm done," Garnet announced.

"With what?" asked Steven, cautiously.

"Today," said Garnet, with a shrug. "You. All of this. We need to think about things. This… Fusion… it's not what we expected… and I need some time together—alone, whatever I am now, so… bye," she finished.

And with that abrupt dismissal, Garnet waded into the ocean and out of sight.

… leaving the Crystal Gems to stare after her amidst the flaming wreckage of the Homeworld ship.

"You know," said Rhyolite, rubbing their chin. "Now that I think about it, they're actually a really great couple."

Axinite collapsed against Rhyolite's leg and tried to stop hyperventilating.

Steven continued to stare forward, it wasn't until the third repetition of the jingle that he realized his phone was ringing.

"Uh, hello?" said Steven, answering the call.

"Steven," came Lucy's coldly furious voice from the other end of the phone. "If this is a joke, I'm going to kill you. And if it's _not_ a joke and you get yourself killed, then I'm going to spot-weld your gem back together, so that I can kill you again for making me worry!" she said, finally giving way to frazzled anger. "What on Earth is going on?" she demanded.

He did not have an immediate response for that. "Steven?" asked Lucy again, this time sounding more brittle than angry.

* * *

AN: Much as I love 'Stronger than You' it's a song for one voice, and I wanted something for three, so I used meters from other songs and musicals and such.

Not sure what the tune would be, since I'm a lyricist not a composer, but Flint's section was pretty much just the meter from the chorus of Joey Scarbury's 'Believe it or Not,' Slate's section took its meter from the chorus of Chicago's 'Cell Block Tango', Calcite's section was loosely based on the meter from Gloria Gaynor's 'I Will Survive,' and Rhyolite's little poem at the end probably had more of Edgar Allen Poe's 'Alone' in it than it did anything else. So, basically, pick/write whatever tune you think will go best with the words, because I certainly didn't decide on one.


	3. Chapter 3

Full Disclosure

* * *

Rhyolite, Axinite, Steven, and Lion stood staring out at the ocean, where Garnet had just disappeared. Behind them, the remains of Pearl's ship remained aflame, adding a chaotic backdrop to the entire scene.

"That could have gone a lot worse," said Rhyolite.

Axinite scoffed. "Could have gone a lot better, too," he added, looking back to see the burning pieces of the ship scattered all across the surrounding area.

Lucy was still on the line. "Steven, I got your message, but I was off-planet and couldn't answer it," she was saying. "Steven?"

Steven was looking down at the footprints Garnet had left in the sand as she walked into the ocean.

"What happened?" Lucy was asking.

"We won!" announced Rhyolite, in satisfaction. "Steven, tell Lucy we said hi."

"Is that… Rhyolite?" said Lucy.

Lion insisted on pressing his forehead to Steven's and purring, making it hard to concentrate on the conversation.

"What's going on?" asked Lucy. "You said something about a giant space hand and we were all gonna die?"

"Lucy!" said Steven. "You're not going to believe what happened! Where do I even begin?"

Lion wandered off, and Rhyolite had picked up Axinite and placed him on their head, doing a victory dance while the latter complained immensely.

"Okay," Axinite was saying. "I think that's about all the celebration I can stand. I'd like to get off the ride now."

A horn sounded, and Greg's truck drove up to them. "Steven!"

"Dad!" He turned to his phone. "Lucy, I have to go! I promise I'll call you back!" He hung up and ran over to greet his father.

"Dad's back! Dad's back!" chanted Steven.

"Oh, thank goodness you're okay!" said Greg, sweeping him up into a hug.

"I saw the spaceship start to leave and then it crashed and I came back and—ugh, your eye," said Greg, finally noticing Steven's injury. He pulled himself back on topic, though, in an effort to remain cheerful. "I guess those jerks were no match for the Crystal Gems!"

"No way," protested Steven, "they were super-strong!"

Greg faltered. "But you were able to beat them back?" he asked.

"No, they totally stomped us!" said Steven, as Greg's face fell further. "This warrior Ruby was super scary and knocked me unconscious. Then they abducted me onto the ship because they wanted to take me away forever! And then we crashed the ship but I almost died!" he said, not noticing as Greg's expression becoming more and more distraught with each detail he heard.

"What did they want with you?" Greg finally managed.

Steven swallowed. "They think I'm mom."

"Are—are more Homeworld Gems gonna come after you?" asked Greg.

"I—" Steven paused, "uh, I don't know. Maybe?" said Steven with a shrug.

"Steven," said Greg, "I'm supportive, and very proud of you… and I'll be right back."

Greg ran to the car and slammed the door. "Gotta calm down," he said to himself. "Where's my relaxing music CD? This one?" he placed the disc into the player and Heavy Metal began to play.

"Wrong one!" exclaimed Greg. "Stop! Eject!" Greg punched a few buttons before he gave up and began to hyperventilate.

Steven looked down as his phone began ringing. Lucy was calling him again.

He looked from his panicking father to the phone where his worried friend was trying to reach him.

He didn't answer.

* * *

"Now, Lucy," Steven rehearsed, as he ambled aimlessly around the wreckage-littered town, "Please don't freak out, but a giant laser hand tried to steal me into space. But it didn't, it didn't! I'm back and everything is fine—"

Broken glass tinkled under his feet, and his hand moved through where the door to the Big Donut should have been.

He decided to keep walking. The phone sounded again. "Lucy, funny story," Steven tried again. "There's a lot more Gems out there than we thought. And… I think they wanna… kill me?" He tripped over a section of the ship's wiring. It was still live enough to spark. Steven looked around uneasily at the deserted boardwalk, only to be startled again, as his phone went off once more. He giggled, a bit hysterically, at how high-strung the whole situation was making him.

"Hey, Lucy," he said, "That message I left you was—was just a dream! Hahaaa—she's too smart for that," said Steven, shaking his head.

He climbed a nearby hill, the constant noise from his phone now starting to seriously grate on his nerves.

Steven bunched his hands into fists next to his ears, trying to block out the sound, before sighing in defeat, and looking down at view, which contained Beach City, as well as the Temple and the shattered spaceship below, the wreckage of which was still smoking. As he watched, he saw Government vans start to arrive, probably bringing in the clean-up crews who would no-doubt want to study the pieces of the ship.

"Yo!" called a voice in the distance.

Steven turned to see a familiar figure heading towards him.

"Oh, hey Ronaldo," said Steven. "When did you get back?"

"I never left," said Ronaldo, with a shrug. "Thought that there might have been something I could do but… there wasn't," he said, shaking his head. "Until now, at least," he added. "How's the eye?

Steven shrugged, and Ronaldo sat down on the grass, set his duffle bag down, and pulled out a first aid kid.

"Any headaches?" he asked. "How about blurred vision or nausea? Encounters with eighth level beings can sometimes cause psychological trauma in the unprepared."

Steven shook his head. Ronaldo went through what felt like an entire flowchart's worth of questions, even checking Steven's pupils, before announcing that he'd reached a diagnosis, and pulling an icepack out of the first aid kit.

"Here," Ronaldo said. "Keep that on for ten minutes. It should help with the swelling."

"Thanks," said Steven.

For a minute, they sat in silence.

"How are you holding up?" Ronaldo said. "I only saw part of it, but what I saw was more than some agents face in their entire careers, and you did it without even flinching. That took guts. I'm proud of you, man. I'm sure your family is, too." he finished, just the barest hint of a question in the statement.

"I don't know," said Steven, doubtfully, "My Dad flipped out, when I told him what happened…"

"Sounds typical," Ronaldo admitted. "Most people can't face something like what you've been through without serious emotional upheaval. I suspect that at least part of your resilience is due to your Gem heritage. Half of you is designed to be a soldier, and to handle things like this. Don't judge your father too harshly—he's only human."

"Maybe," said Steven, shifting the ice pack on his eye, "But, Lucy's been calling me too. What am I gonna say? Will she get upset, if I tell her what happened?"

"Possibly," allowed Ronaldo. "If you'd like, of course, you're welcome to suffer in silence, shouldering the knowledge no one else can bear—weighing in the cold, leaded anchor of the truth, which ordinary people aren't equipped to handle. As they say at headquarters: the abyss is no Sunday swan ride..."

"What?" asked Steven.

"This is no easy path we've chosen," Ronaldo continued. "There are sacrifices which must be made...

"Look at them all down there, Steven," he said, with a sweeping gesture at the empty city below. "It's our duty to let those simple people live out their simple lives, without ever knowing the burden of being friends with us."

Steven tilted his head. "Do you really believe that?"

Ronaldo snorted. "No. But you might start to, if you keep trying to protect your friends by keeping secrets."

Steven's phone started ringing again.

"You know her better than I do," said Ronaldo. "What do you think she would want?"

Steven took a deep breath and answered his phone. "Lucy?"

Ronaldo saluted. He placed the first aid kit down next to Steven and shouldered his duffel bag, waving as he walked back down the hill.

"Steven?" said Lucy. "Are you okay? You weren't answering your phone. What happened?"

Steven sighed. _"Everybody told me Gem stuff's dangerous,"_ he sang _. "I guess I didn't believe it. Until now, Dad always seemed apprehensive. And now he's really freaking out. What do I do? I don't want that for you."_

"Wait, what do you mean?" asked Lucy. "This _isn't_ a joke? It sounds like it's bad. Dork, what's going on?"

" _Everybody tells me life is precious,"_ Steven continued, _"on the planet Earth. And that means you, and I have to protect you. What if somehow you get hurt? What do I do? I don't want that for you."_

"One: that's kinda sweet," said Lucy. "Two: you're kinda dumb. Three: thanks, clear as mud. Just tell me, okay?"

" _Four Gems came here from the Homeworld,"_ said Steven _. "They captured us on their spaceship and started to go. We escaped, we were lucky, but they'll prob'ly be back, when or where I don't know. And their ship exploded on the beach, now I'm just not sure what to do, or what do think? I just don't know."_

"Whatever this is," said Lucy, "you know I'm your friend. And if they want you, they're going through me. Go talk to the Gems. They should have advice. Just go find them, 'kay? And I'm on my way."

With that, Lucy hung up, and Steven lowered his phone.

Well, that could have gone worse.

* * *

Out on the beach, Axinite strode towards the clean-up crews, a complaining Rhyolite trudging along in his wake.

"Aww, come on," Rhyolite whined. "They have more than enough people. Why do we have to help?"

"If it weren't for us, this mess wouldn't even be here. It's our responsibility to help clean up the wreckage," Axinite answered.

"Can Lucy help?" asked Steven, joining them. "She said she was coming over."

"Nah," said Rhyolite. "Lucy's a guest. Steven should get the afternoon off, to run and play and enjoy his childhood."

Axinite considered it. "Fine. Have fun, Steven,"

"Thanks!" Steven said. Rhyolite waved sadly and mouthed, 'Be Free.'

For a moment, Steven looked as though he were going to say something else, but then he turned and walked away.

* * *

A few minutes later, Lucy Maheswaran arrived, spotted the work crews and the Gems, and headed over. She was a young girl with wild hair who wore glasses without lenses.

"Wow. He wasn't kidding," she said, eyeing the pieces of the ship all scattered about. "How's Steven?" she asked the Gems.

"I don't know," said Axinite, uncomfortably. "I don't understand your human psychology."

"Did you see where he went?" asked Lucy, frowning.

"Thataway," said Rhyolite, pointing with their two right hands.

"Thanks!" said Lucy, heading off in the indicated direction.

* * *

Lucy found Steven lying atop one of the broken-off fingers of the ship, looking at something on his cellphone. She couldn't tell what it was, from this distance.

"Steven?" she asked.

He called her, but didn't come down. She picked up her phone and answered. "Hello?" she said.

"Hey, Lucy," said Steven, sounding absolutely exhausted.

"Are you alright?" Lucy asked, looking for a way to climb up herself.

"You ever think it might be better for everyone, if you just built a giant wall to keep the rest of the world out?" asked Steven.

"All the time..." Lucy admitted, scaling a neighboring piece of wreckage and jumping over to the one Steven was on, "but I've never had a good reason for it," she added, sighing in relief as she stuck the landing.

"I don't either," said Steven. "We all got away. We're fine now."

"But you almost weren't, right? That's gotta leave you feeling vulnerable," said Lucy. She made it to the top and sat down next to him, slinging an arm over his shoulder." Is your eye okay?" she asked, noticing the injury.

"You don't have to worry about it..." he said.

"Too late," she said. "Do you want me to get some ice?"

"Already got some," Steven said, holding the half-melted icepack. "Thanks, though." He sighed. "I guess you wanna know what happened?"

She examined his expression, and how very, very fragile it appeared. "Eh," Lucy said, "it can wait. Wanna go watch a movie? Or, if you wanna stay here, we could just cloud-watch."

Steven sniffed, and then smiled. "A movie sounds fun."

* * *

Four hours later, Steven and Lucy sat, side-by-side on the beach, speaking quietly as the waves lapped in and out at their feet.

"So, Garnet is somewhere underwater," Lucy was saying.

"Yeah, and Pearl and Amethyst escaped while the ship was coming down," said Steven. "They could be anywhere."

"That's a lot of loose ends," said Lucy. "Hopefully, they can reverse-engineer at least some of the ship's technology. There might be something there that'll help you track them."

"Maybe," said Steven. "But we still have no idea what's coming. Pearl said they were here to check on something, but I don't remember what."

"We'll figure it out," Lucy assured him. "And we'll do it together," she finished, quoting the story he'd just told her.

"Yeah," agreed Steven.

Just then, Greg drove up. "Kiddo! There you are!" he said. "Oh, hey Lucy," he said, upon spotting that there were actually two children. "Do you need a ride home?"

"Oh, Dad," said Steven, remembering his father's earlier meltdown. "Are you doing okay?"

"Oh, I got it out of my system," he said, dismissively, brushing his hair back in an effort to look confident, "I'm back to being your Cool Dad!"

Steven and Lucy exchanged a smile, and climbed aboard for a ride.

* * *

They drove through town, seeing the efforts at cleanup, done mainly by government agents, but assisted occasionally by citizen volunteers (though not Carrie). Ronaldo was helping to clear the wreckage away from the Big Donut. The rest of the Frymans and the Pizzas were in a group together behind their restaurants, where there was less broken glass, while they exchanged news and rumors. Peedee and Kiki waved as they drove past, while Zola ignored them all in favor of texting on her cellphone.

They also spotted Mr. Smiley headed back to Funland, exchanging nods with the Mayor, who was giving an inspirational speech to Yellowtail and Onion, while his daughter Jasmine waited in the van, looking bored.

Then, they were out of the city proper, and onto the open road.

* * *

AN: So, in canon, Steven's Lament is clearly a call and response song, but with no response, because Steven won't answer his phone. This version has the same tune, but two voices, even though Lucy's speaking and not singing.


	4. Chapter 4

Joyride

* * *

It was a lovely day at the Temple. The air was warm, the sun was shining, and the beach was absolutely covered with Government cleanup crews, who were excavating and cataloguing pieces of the crashed Homeworld Ship.

Axinite was conferring with one of the supervisors, assessing safety hazards and comparing methodology with the human workers.

Rhyolite was obligingly acting as a living crane, carefully moving large pieces of the ship into crates, and packing them in to protect them during transport before placing them onto trucks, which took off when full, new trucks soon arriving to replace them.

Steven was working with the ground crews, near Rhyolite, digging pieces out of the sand with a shovel. Finding a tiny pink shard, no bigger than a bit of sea glass, Steven turned to Rhyolite.

"Do we really have to get every piece?" he asked.

Rhyolite angled the piece of the hull they were hefting diagonally in order to make it fit in the shipping container, grinning as they managed to close the lid in on top of it. "Couldn't hurt," they said, answering his question. "The more we have to work with, the better our chances of stopping any other Homeworld ships they might send."

They shaded their face with an upper set of hands, surveying their progress so far. "Besides," they said, "we don't know what parts of the ship might be dangerous. The more we find, the less chance that anyone else will find pieces of the ship and be hurt by accident."

"We also need to find Amethyst and Pearl's escape pod," added Axinite, coming over, grabbing a shovel, and falling into place beside Steven. "Satellite footage indicates that it went down somewhere near the north pole."

"So much to do, so little time," mused Rhyolite.

Steven dropped the tiny piece of the ship into a nearby bucket, filled with other small pieces of the ship. "On it," he said, his eyes filled with resolve.

* * *

Later, as Steven was working near the base of the cliff, he fell into a kind of trance, levering large pieces out of the sand, and moving to the next section when the current one was clear. Above him, the seagulls shrieked and the sun beat down.

As he tried to pry a particularly large piece from the ground, sweat poured down his face, and he failed to notice that someone was trying to get his attention.

"—even. Steven! STEVEN!"

"Huh?" said Steven.

"Hey," said Jasmine.

Steven looked up to see the coolkids standing before him: Jasmine, Carrie, and Zola.

Jasmine Dewey was the mayor's daughter and varsity athlete in multiple sports at the local high school. She stood six foot three and had a mane of brown hair that went clear down to her waist.

Caroline, or 'Carrie,' as she was commonly known, dressed completely in black: black shirt, jacket, skirt, tights, and platform shoes. Her hair and skin, however, were unusually white. She was forever engrossed in her laptop, her phone, or one of her numerous tablets, which she had bought herself, using the income from her part-time job at the Big Donut.

Zola Pizza was five feet tall, same as Carrie, but her lack of shoes whenever she could get away with it made her appear the shortest of the trio. She had brown eyes and black hair, which she wore in box braids with several seashells braided in for decoration. She usually wore a sundress, a swimsuit, or a wetsuit, depending on the weather and how close they were to the ocean, her favorite place in the world.

"Hey, Steven!" said Zola, who had been the one trying to get his attention in the first place. "Welcome back to Earth!"

"What?!" said Steven, panicking, "Who told you?"

"Well," said Jasmine, gruffly, "the giant hand from the sky _does_ appear to be in pieces all over the beach. Pretty obvious you must have had something to do with it."

"Right," Steven agreed, with a nervous chuckle. "Sorry. I was zoning out."

"We were about to warp over to one of the Sky Arenas and start training to survive the alien invasion," continued Jasmine.

"You should come with!" said Zola.

"Oh," said Steven. "But we're not even sure if there's going to be an invasion..."

"Always plan for the worst," said Jasmine. "Besides, you've got first-hand knowledge of the Homeworld Gems. You can help us strategize. You have to come."

"Accurate data is vital in any war," agreed Carrie, as she typed something into her phone.

"Sorry, guys," said Steven, apologetically. "I have to help clean up the ship. Maybe later."

"Aww," complained Zola.

"Unfortunate," said Carrie.

"Acknowledged," said Jasmine, flashing an OK gesture at Steven, who returned it. "See you later, Universe."

Steven waved goodbye, before he raised his shovel to continue digging.

* * *

By nightfall, all visible pieces of the ship had been cleared from the area. Now it was merely a matter of going through with a fine-toothed comb and picking up all the fragments they could from the beach and the surrounding ocean. But that was a job for tomorrow.

Tonight, Steven lay in his bed under the moonlight, groaning in fatigue.

"Uuugh," Steven complained. "The callouses on my hands have callouses."

He groaned again, rolling onto his side. "The working man's burden is truly a heavy one."

Just then, his phone beeped, announcing that he had received a text message.

He picked up the device. It appeared that the message was from Carrie.

" _Universe,"_ read the text. _"Still awake?"_

" _Yeah,"_ Steven replied. _"What's up?_

" _Look outside."_ was all he received in return.

He did so, and saw a t-shirt smack into the glass of his window with a dull 'thud'.

"T-shirt rain," said Steven. He peered up into the sky in puzzlement. "But no t-shirt clouds."

He looked down to see Jasmine taking aim with a t-shirt cannon, the same one which Steven had previously used during their war of artistic expression. Carrie stood beside her, scrolling down as she read something on a tablet. On the ground beside them were two or three other T-shirts, obviously from previous attempts at getting his attention.

Steven immediately headed outside.

"What are you guys doing here?" he asked. "And why are you making it t-shirt rain?"

"Ha!" said Jasmine, "Told ya he would notice, Carrie!"

"Whatever," said the shorter girl.

Steven's phone received another text message, which he subtly checked. It read, _"Let her have her dreams."_

"Yeah," said Steven, "thanks for all the t-shirts, Jasmine," he said, pulling the nearest one on over his head.

"So," he asked, "what's up?"

"Come on," said Jasmine. "It's time to hang out. Carrie thinks she found something interesting."

"But you can't hang out at night," protested Steven. "Night is for dreaming!"

Carrie shrugged. "Sleep is for the weak. Besides, if we warp to the other side of the planet, it'll be daytime," she pointed out.

Steven examined that logic, and could find no fault with it. But still he hesitated.

"Aren't you done working for the day?" asked Jasmine, hoping to show him that his previous excuse no longer applied.

"Hmm," said Steven. "Yeah, okay!" he decided. "Let's hang out!"

"Awesome," said Jasmine.

"Now we just need to drag Zola back to shore, and we're all set," said Carrie.

"Wohoo!" came Zola's voice, drifting in from the sea. She was surfing in the moonlight, and, judging by the way she wiped out, visibility probably wasn't the best. She washed ashore, laughing, and grinned up at the faces of Steven, Carrie, and Jasmine, all there to meet her.

"Hey, guys!" she said, accepting Jasmine's hand and pulling herself to her feet. Carrie brushed sand from Zola's back before frowning at her fingerless gloves, which were now covered in grit.

"You guys ready to go yet or what?" Zola asked, impatiently.

Carrie sighed and wiped her hands on her pants.

* * *

The Warp Pad activated, a column of light shooting up towards the sky, before dying down to reveal the forms of Steven and the coolkids.

Technically, civilians weren't even supposed to use the Cyrstal Gems' Warp Pads, in the first place; they were supposed to use the public ones, like everyone else. And, legally speaking, they were under twenty-one, and so their warp cards should have been restricted to a fifty-mile radius. But Carrie had long-since learned to get around such restrictions through use of forgery and hacking, and thus, the four of them had no issues with appearing in a desert at least two continents away from Beach City, where it appeared to be late afternoon.

As they stepped off the pad, Carrie pulled her earphones' cord from her tablet, and techno music filled the silence around them.

"Aw," sighed Zola. "It's too dry. The wind is nice though."

"Breathe deep, Steven," advised Jasmine. "This is the smell of freedom"

Steven followed his advice and took a breath. "Freedom smells like an oven," he decided.

Zola giggled. "It doesn't," she said. "Trust me, it doesn't."

"You know what definitely doesn't smell like freedom?" asked Carrie, frowning as the glare made reading her screens all but impossible. "Fish."

"Why fish?" asked Steven.

"Uh oh," said Zola, "Here we go..."

"I simply don't understand what's wrong with wanting to go into Gem Research," she said. "But, the other day, my step-dad was all on my case again, saying, 'Wra wra wra wra wra, wra wra wra. Wra! Ugh. I'm just like, 'I don't want to fish for fish, I want to fish for _information_. Everyone knows you make more money in the private sector, stepfather'…"

"At least he only bugs you about one thing," said Jasmine. "My dad's seems compelled say something about every little thing I do, 'cause I'm the _mayor's daughter_. And I'm like, 'you can't tell me what to do, old man. I could destroy you with one arm tied behind my back. And then _I_ would be mayor and make the rules.'"

Zola laughed. "Puh-lease. You're just walkin' in cake with that talk. You guys don't even know what bad is until you have a sister. I don't know why I have to spell it out that she's the smart twin and I'm the fun one! Don't ask me about my grades, I'll be at a surfing contest."

"Family stuff is tricky," said Steven.

The other three nodded in agreement.

"A few months back, my dad and the Gems grounded me from going off-planet," said Steven.

"Bummer," said Carrie.

"No way," said Zola.

"That's the worst," said Jasmine.

"And then I found out that the Crystal Gems are rebels, and that the other Gems out in space all want us dead, 'cause they think we're traitors. And they tried to take me hostage, 'cause they think I'm my mom. And… maybe I kinda am?" He sighed. "I wish I could talk to Rhyolite and Axinite about this, but I don't wanna make them feel bad by asking about what happened back when were bad guys..."

Steven wasn't watching, but all three of the coolkids' eyes were wide with surprise.

Carrie reached down and muted her music.

"We knew they were invaders… but are you saying that your Gem is actually the same one your mom had?" said Zola.

"Yeah," said Steven.

"You just found this out? But, you seemed so upbeat, when we saw you earlier..." said Jasmine. "you're a real trooper, Steven Universe."

Steven smiled softly.

"Yeah, seriously," Carrie, "I'd turn to fishing in a heartbeat if it meant not dealing with things like tha—aaaa—that!"

"What is it?" asked Zola, as Carrie shielded her screen in an effort to see it better. "What did you find?"

"Gem technology," said Carrie, quietly. " _Active_ Gem technology."

Even after five millennia, the earth was still littered with old relics from the Crystal Gems' rebellion against the Homeworld. But most of it was deactivated, or at least dormant. Hearing about active Gem technology in the region made them all very uneasy.

"Was this why you wanted to come here?" asked Steven.

"I knew there was something," said Carrie. "But I thought it was dead."

"Got a way to contact the Crystal Gems?" asked Jasmine.

Steven pulled out his phone and dialed, putting the call on speaker phone.

"Axinite?" he said, as the Gem on the other end picked up.

"Steven?" said Axinite. "I thought you were asleep? Everything alright?"

"So far," said Steven, "I was hanging out with some friends in the…" he looked to Carrie for information.

"Kalahari," she supplied.

"… Kalahari Desert," Steven finished. "Carrie said she was detecting active Gem technology. Do you guys know what that would be?"

"No idea," said Axinite. "We're all looking for Pearl and Amethyst's escape pod right now, so I don't have a lot of time to talk. Whatever it is, try to keep it contained, if you see it. We'll alert the local authorities."

"Ok," said Steven. "Thanks, Axinite!"

"No problem. Have fun with your friends, Steven!"

It was at that point that a shockwave shot out across the desert, and all their electronics fried.

"Well," said Jasmine, pulling out a dead cellphone. "That wasn't ominous at all."

"Aw, man," said Zola. "I liked this phone!"

"I liked everything in this bag," said Carrie, mournfully, examining her unresponsive tablet and sighing.

"I think it came from that way," said Jasmine, striding forward. The other two made noises of agreement, and followed.

"Wait!" said Steven. "Are you sure that you guys don't wanna go back home?"

"The Crystal Gems want whatever that was contained, right?" asked Carrie.

"Well, yeah," said Steven, "But that doesn't mean you have to do it. You might get hurt!"

"We live in dangerous times," said Zola, with a shrug. "Besides, if you're going, we're going, too."

Steven considered it, but couldn't think of a quick way to get them out of danger. "All right," he said, reluctantly, "But as the Crystal Gem of the group, I think I should go first."

Zola and Carrie chuckled softly. Jasmine saluted and brought her heels together. "Lead the way, General Universe."

Steven blinked. "I'm not really in the military, you know."

"Yeah," said Jasmine, "but Selenite was."

Steven was confused. "So?"

"So," said Zola, "if you're your own mom…"

Steven's eyes widened realization.

"Make way for General Universe!" he announced, before returning Jasmine's salute with a nod and began marching in the direction that she had indicated.

They heard the fighting before they saw it: cries of anger, frustration, whip cracks, the sound of something snapping. As they crested the final dune separating them from the action, a great cloud of dust was kicked up.

The four of them dropped to watch from a less obvious position.

When the sand settled back down, they saw two Gems locked in battle.

"Why are they fighting?" murmured Jasmine.

"That's Amethyst and Pearl," said Steven. "They're both Homeworld Gems but Amethyst's… kind of on our side. I think. Plus, she and Pearl really hate each other."

"What's that?" asked Zola, nodding towards a square design that seemed to have been etched into the sand itself. In the middle of it was a crater.

"I have no idea," said Steven, "but I have to go help Amethyst!"

He started forward, but Carrie caught his arm. "Steven," she said, pulling something out of her bag. "Does this look familiar?"

Steven froze. "It's a Gem Destabilizer," he said, "The Homeworld Gems used it to poof Rhyolite."

"It's a weapon?" Carrie asked, and Steven nodded.

"Take it," she said. "We'll see what's in the giant hole in the ground. Odds are, it's their vessel after a crash landing. It could have more weapons."

Steven took the Destabilizer and rushed off to aid his friend.

"Where did you even find that, anyway?" asked Jasmine, curiously.

"It was stuck into the wall at the Big Donut," Carrie replied.

"Come on," said Zola, crouching low. "Let's see what we can do."

* * *

Amethyst liked to think of herself as a badass Gem. She'd been trained as a soldier, despite being labeled 'defective' and had kept up with the best of them. She had millennia of experience with combat, and was no slouch herself when it came to the martial arts.

But this Pearl who had come from Homeworld was on a whole 'nother level. She used holograms. To fight. What kind of Gem trained so much and so extensively that even their _holograms_ were deadly? The servants of Rose Quartz did, apparently.

And, though Amethyst didn't like to admit it, they were slowly overwhelming her.

As she accumulated a variety of wounds and injuries, her reaction times slowed, without having a similar effect on Pearl, because few of Amethyst's blows had landed on the real thing. Amethyst found, as the fight wore on, that it was harder and harder to keep up. She found she couldn't turn away quickly enough from one of the spears. She braced herself for pain.

… and found the weapon reflected back by a shimmering Mirror.

"Steven?" she asked in disbelief.

"Amethyst!" Steven said, with a bright smile. "I found you!"

Taking advantage of the sudden boost in defense, Amethyst's whip lashed around two of Pearl's holograms, crushing them together and disrupting them.

Amethyst then grabbed Steven and leapt away, trying to gain some breathing space.

"Are the rest of the Gems here?" she asked, setting him back down onto the sand.

Steven shook his head. "So far, just me. I do have this, though," he said, showing her the Destabilizer. "Do you know how to make it work?"

"Nuh uh," Amethyst said. "Let's see…"

Pearl and her holograms were back. Steven put up his bubble almost without thinking about it, as the two of them fiddled with the machine. They did get it to power up, but Amethyst was touching the wrong part of it when it did, and she retreated into her gem. Steven caught her before her gem hit the ground, and panicked so badly that he dropped the bubble altogether.

He held the Gem Destabilizer defensively now, cradling Amethyst's gem in the other hand, as the hostile Gem approached.

"All right," said Pearl, with an unconvincing smile. "Just be a good little human, now, and put down the weapon."

Ten holo-Pearls formed, surrounding him.

Steven dropped the weapon. Pearl retrieved the Destabilizer, and brandished it threateningly.

"Now," she instructed, "drop the Gem."

Steven swallowed. "But, Amethyst…"

"I said drop it!" snapped Pearl.

It was at that moment that several things happened at once.

A flare shot off, painting the diamond pattern he recognized from the ground into the sky, Amethyst's Gem began to glow, and Pearl turned to check on the escape pod, taking her eyes off Steven for a moment.

He ran, taking Amethyst with him.

As moment later, Amethyst had reformed in a light show, and leapt at Pearl with a growl, snaking her whips around the Homeworld Gem while she was distracted. As Amethyst did so, Pearl's arms were pulled to her sides, and the Gem Destabilizer made contact with her leg. Pearl disappeared into her gem in a cloud of smoke.

One of the holo-Pearls caught the gem and ran off. The other holo-Pearls followed in retreat.

"Oh no you don't," said Amethyst. She paused, as she saw Steven wasn't coming. "Steven?"

"You go ahead," said Steven, "I have to make sure my friends are ok!"

Amethyst blinked. "Friends? I thought the Gems weren't here?" She followed Steven, curious as to who he was talking about.

"Is this the escape pod?" Steven asked, running over to the dented sphere in the middle of the sand diamond.

"Yeah," Amethyst confirmed. "But it shouldn't be closed like that. Is someone in there?"

"I think so," he said, worriedly. "Can you get it open?"

"Sure," said Amethyst. She wrapped a pair of whips around the ship and scored a ring around the hull of the escape pod with the shards studded into her weapon. Then, she took a flying leap and kicked at the stress marks, causing the small vessel to split into two jagged halves.

From within the ship spilled a good deal of viscous fluid, and three humans, all of whom began coughing and hacking the foreign liquid from their lungs.

Jasmine was the first to recover, and she immediately scanned the vicinity visually for threats, spotting her rescuers immediately.

"Steven," she said, weakly, "...thanks." She then collapsed, falling facedown into the puddle of goo. Steven immediately rushed over, making sure she was okay, before starting to help her to her feet.

Surprisingly, Amethyst followed, offering a hand to Carrie, who took it, after only slight hesitation, as Jasmine and Steven turned to help Zola.

"These are your friends?" Amethyst asked in confusion. She hadn't known that the Crystal Gems had friends outside their own group. As far as she'd known, they'd always been remarkably insular.

"Yeah," said Steven. "They're the ones who distracted Pearl by shooting the flare after you were poofed."

"Why would you do that?" asked Amethyst. "You weren't part of the fight."

Zola coughed weakly. "But Steven was," she said.

"Thank you," Jasmine said, "for protecting him."

Carrie let go of Amethyst's hand to massage her own throat in discomfort. "That was disgusting," Carrie said, "Who else is ready to go home?"

"What say you, 'General Universe'?" said Jasmine. "Time for a tactical retreat?"

Steven considered the situation with the solemnity it deserved, before announcing. "Retreat!" and taking off at a run, back to the Warp Pad.

Chuckling, Jasmine and Carrie followed suit, albeit at a much slower pace, as they were still regaining full oxygenation of their blood.

Seeing Amethyst hesitate about whether or not to follow, Zola flashed a warm smile in her direction, before tugging on her arm and taking off herself.

* * *

Several minutes later saw them all at the Warp Pad and back in Beach City.

After a brief discussion on how little good it would do to try and keep any of this secret, the three coolkids had decided to weather things out at Steven's house until it was time to face the music, taking turns monopolizing the shower and getting a lot of use out of the novelty t-shirts from the t-shirt cannon while their own clothes were in the washing machine.

This certitude that things were going to go very hard on them puzzled Amethyst some, because she couldn't, for the life of her, see how their aiding Steven would have resulted in punishment. Nevertheless, Amethyst remained as well, for what reason, she wasn't entirely certain. She could have been hunting down Pearl to take revenge for everything that the Homeworld Gem had put her through... but Zola, Carrie, and Jasmine, as they had introduced themselves, were relatively good, if eccentric, conversationalists, and Amethyst found herself distracted.

Steven, of course, had headed straight for the house phone the instant they'd gotten home and called the Crystal Gems, who had immediately returned to make sure Steven was alright, before warping off to retrieve the escape pod and track down Pearl. And Amethyst, as had been stated earlier, had stayed.

At some point, the Gems must have called the Mayor to update him that they'd found Pearl's escape pod—and that his daughter and her friends had been involved—because all of their parents showed up, looking positively furious.

And now, the three teens stood, side-by-side, facing down their guardians.

"Of all the foolhardy, irresponsible," began Mayor Dewey, "…what made you think that this was something you were even remotely qualified to handle?!"

Jasmine shrugged. "I wanna be a soldier."

Carrie folded her arms across her chest. "I wanna be an engineer."

Zola held her palms face up in a 'search me' gesture. "I was bored."

It was at this point that the Koffee, Yellowtail, and Diana started to put their two cents in, their voices blending together into an incoherent mess, that had Steven and Amethyst glancing at each other in worry, before, as one, they moved forward to stand between the humans and their parents.

"Hey!" said Amethyst. "Cut 'em some slack!"

"It's not their fault!" said Steven. "It wasn't even nighttime!"

"What?" asked Koffee, in confusion.

Jasmine put a hand on Steven's shoulder and smiled in thanks. "We were just having some fun," she explained, glancing back up at her father to gauge his reaction. "Carrie thought she had detected old Gem technology and we were going to go see if we could claim salvage rights and make some extra cash. We didn't expect it to be dangerous."

"And the technology was dormant," Carrie pointed out. "It was the Gems themselves who posed the danger. Besides, it wasn't like we could have known they'd be there. The government intelligence reports all seemed convinced that the pod had wound up in the far north. It didn't even occur to me that they would have been mistaken."

"And you know this how?" asked Mayor Dewey, suspiciously.

Carrie coughed. "I plead the fifth."

"Only one of the Gems was hostile," said Zola, deciding to run interferrence. "And Steven and Amethyst managed to drive her off before she could hurt anyone! We more or less just sat on the sidelines."

Diana sighed. "I… suppose that, considering the situation, you didn't take unnecessary risks."

"Wra Wra. Wra," agreed Yellowtail.

Koffee frowned. "Zola, in the future, you have to be careful… like you were today."

Mayor Dewey wrung his hands, looking conflicted. "Jasmine, I know you think you're invincible, but you actually managed to show restraint. I'm proud of you."

After a few more minutes of admonishment and worrying, the parents filed out of the house, headed back to their homes.

The five remained at Steven's house, somewhat shell-shocked by the barrage of parental attention.

A minute or two later, the Warp Pad activated, and Rhyolite and Axinite returned, bringing the pieces of Pearl's escape pod with them.

"Steven!" said Axinite. "Great work! Your friends as well!"

Rhyolite blinked. "Is that Amethyst?" he said, noticing the other Gem for the first time.

Amethyst started, finally realizing how long she'd been there. "Welp, I'm out of here," she said, flipping her hair. "If anyone needs me, I'll be on the moon."

She paused, as she reached the Warp Pad, turning back to Steven and the coolkids. "... you guys wanna come with?"

The three teenagers grinned. "Sure!" said Zola.

"Yeah, man," said Jasmine.

Carrie shrugged. She'd made a trip to her car and gotten hold of working electronics, which helped a great deal with regaining her emotional equilibrium. "I'm down for whatever, " she said.

Steven hesitated. "Sorry, guys, but—"

"Steven!" said Rhyolite, upon seeing the boy's distress.

"Yeah?" said Steven, nervously.

"You're ungrounded."

Steven broke into a smile, as he ran over to hug Rhyolite, before heading to the Warp Pad with the rest of them.

The rest of the evening ended up being documented fairly extensively through the photos posted to Carrie's social media accounts: selfies taken at a lunar park, pictures of Amethyst and Jasmine going head-to-head in low-G basketball, a picture of all of them at a mall foodcourt, and a final selfie with everyone outside the moonbase, Earth just starting to rise in the background.

* * *

AN: That's it, the rest is author's notes.

Notes on Character-Shuffling. In case anyone wants a full list of what was changed:

Inspired by Mom-swap comics and various rants I saw on Tumblr, for this fanfic I decided to shuffle around characters from three main spheres of influence: Crystal Gems, Humans, and Homeworld Gems. I took some liberties in assigning characters to the various factions, and in creating personalities and backstories for people and events which have not yet appeared in-show, or which are completely off the wall from canon. (for future reference, most of this was written in the hiatus between Too Far and whatever the next episode ends up being).

As for the actual character-swaps...

Seven Crystal Gems were shuffled over to the into the roles of five Homeworld Gems, with Ruby and Sapphire (as themselves and as Garnet) taking Jasper's role, Pearl taking Peridot's role, Amethyst taking Lapis' role, Rose Quartz taking Yellow Diamond's role, and Centipeedle taking the Cluster's role.

Five Homeworld Gems were shuffled over to Earth in six different roles, with Jasper taking Buck's place (as Jasmine Dewey), Peridot taking Sour Cream's and Lars' places (as Caroline or 'Carrie'), Lapis taking Jenny's role (as Zola Pizza), Yellow Diamond taking Vidalia's place (as Diana), and the Cluster taking Connie's place (as Lucy Maheswaran).

Three Coolkids and three additional humans were shuffled into seven roles as Crystal Gems with Buck (as Slate, taking Sapphire's role), Jenny (as Flint, taking Amethyst's role), and Sour Cream (as Calcite, taking Pearl's role) all forming a semi-permanent fusion and taking Garnet's role (as Rhyolite), Lars taking Ruby's role (as Axinite), Vidalia taking the role of Rose Quartz (as Selenite), and Connie taking the role of Centipeedle (as 'Spointy' (the pointy spider)).

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Additional differences in this verse from canon include various changes which I imagine could have arisen from having Vidalia take the role of Rose Quartz as Selenite. In this verse, she was White Diamond, sent to Earth to set up a Kindergarten. Rather than the quartz Kindergarten, which I'm assuming was set up by Rose (I currently subscribe to the Pink Diamond theory), this one was more of a mineral Kindergarten. It produced Gems meant to work in factories and mines as manual laborers. Flint is a Gem from Earth's Kindergarten. Calcite was Selenite's servant, who was supposed to be a sort of Jester, who entertained his owner with jokes and pretty lights. Slate and Axinite were assigned to Selenite as technician and flunky respectively.

Connie's original name was Iridium, a Crystal Gem. Her corrupted form is that of a spider monster with swords for legs (Nicknamed 'Spointy' by Steven) which is capable of spawning smaller versions of itself. Steven, of course, makes friends with it in the episode which parallels Monster Buddies.

In terms of history, the rebellion happened, and the show is still vague on the details, so this verse reserves judgment as well. Their tactics probably involved much use of fusion and long-range drone warfare with the ships of the Homeworld. Because they were factory and mining Gems, the rebels were able to produce their own ships for interstellar combat, even if their controllers did all have to be trained on the fly.

One of the key differences is the handling of Amethyst. My best guess for Canon Lapis is that she was a neutral party during the war, who was imprisoned by the Crystal Gems because her ability to control water would have been a game-breaker, were she to side with Homeworld. Since Amethyst takes Lapis' role, I would have to assume something similar was going on. Since, in this verse, Earth's Kindergarten wasn't producing soldiers, Amethyst would probably have been one of the only combat-trained Gems on the entire planet. In order for the rebellion to occur, they would have had to keep things quiet for as long as possible, sabotaging and cutting off the Homeworld Warps.

The thing is, Selenite was always more of a diplomat than a warrior, and this carried over into this verse's Crystal Gems. And so, before they destroyed the Homeworld Warp, they let Amethyst have the choice of whether or not to go back. She chose to stay on Earth, but not to fight for or against Homeworld, remaining as a neutral party, but on relatively good terms with the rebels. Thus, Amethyst has spent five-thousand years goofing off, playing hooky on Earth, and thoroughly earning the title of 'deserter' with which Ruby labels her. Steven became friends with Amethyst during the episodes which parallel Mirror Gem and Ocean Gem (or perhaps On the Run), but they had a falling out due to their wildly different ideologies. Their fight wasn't resolved before Pearl's holograms found Amethyst and captured her. Before The Return, Amethyst managed to send off a message, warning them of Pearl's impending reappearance.

In terms of ideological differences, little is known of Canon Rose Quartz's true motivations at this point, and so little is also known of Selenite's motivations in this verse. Canon Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl seem to have the ideology of mercenaries, albeit mercenaries on the side of good.

In this verse, the Crystal Gems are essentially Gem Hippies (with Axinite as the token yuppie). They're for free fusion, harmony between Gems and organic life forms, an end to war, and are always up for going to a concert or a protest. They care more about moral issues, but they're much worse at fighting. Their efforts at protecting Earth consist primarily of sharing Gem Technology with the humans and letting them solve their own problems. (At this point, humans have colonized Mars, the Moon, a few of Saturn's moons, and parts of the asteroid belt.) The Crystal Gems are slightly hypocritical, in that they utterly reject 'the man' in the form of the Gempire, but don't see a problem with helping the earth governments, because humans are a much younger species, and they seem relatively naïve to the Gems.

To me, the humans of canon seem somewhat… domesticated. That is, they're used to having the Gems solve all their problems for them, so they're not always as conscious of their own safety and well-being as they probably should be. Granted, a lot of that is probably because this is a children's cartoon… but it's also a children's cartoon that contains the episode 'Nightmare Hospital,' so I don't think I'm completely off the mark. Seeing the 'Armor of the Fallen,' it is obvious that humans once fought alongside Gems to protect the Earth. I'm guessing that this probably stopped because of the ridiculously high mortality rate, causing the Gems to shoulder the entire burden themselves. Whatever caused them to make this shift, it must have been severe, because the Gems don't even ask for help when faced with the threat of the Cluster.

At any rate, Rhyolite and Axinite were and are too lazy to try and do everything themselves, so the humans of this verse know that it's a big, bad universe out there… and that their only allies consist of four (once five, functionally two) Gem aliens who are all that remain of an army once thousands strong. They know that the survival of their species might one day depend on their ability to adapt and assimilate new technology and military ideas, and they take the idea of invasion very seriously.

As far as specific humans go, Ronaldo's fascination with the unknown got him recruited by one of the paranormal research agencies, and now he's stationed in Beach City as a field agent (which Steven found out about in the episode which parallels 'Keep Beach City Weird'). Mayor Dewey has closer ties with the government as well.

As for Greg, the Crystal Gems met him while attending one of his early concerts, and promptly signed on as roadies when the opportunity presented itself. Since the Crystal Gems have Warp Pads, there was absolutely no reason that Greg would have needed to give up his dream of being a rock star to spend time with Selenite, or that they would have had to stay in one place in order to fulfill their duty of protecting the earth.

That being said, Mr. Universe was never anything more than a one hit wonder. Eventually, Greg bought a house in Beach City near the Temple, and makes most of his money these days by going on sporadic tours and uploading videos of his new songs to TubeTube.

Selenite did, indeed, give up her physical form to make Steven. Calcite probably took it the hardest (because he viewed her as a mother-figure), but they all realize that Steven is the legacy which she wanted to leave, and take him in as one of their own without hesitation. It doesn't hurt that her legacy is one of sappy romance and freedom of spirit.

That being said, they're not always the best rolemodels, but their hearts are in the right place.

The biggest difference for Steven himself, in this verse, is that he doesn't have healing powers. Selenite was more of a technopath who loved making automatons (of which Lion is one). So, while it's possible that he might one day design a gem defragmenter better than the ones his mother left behind, he can't heal anyone.

* * *

Misc. notes on the coolkids' Gemsonas (I'm sure all these minerals have been used for gemsonas before, but I didn't exactly do a lot or research, nor was I going for complete originality. Meh, it is what it is.):

Buck: Slate. Gem location: left eye. Weapon: Machinery. (Gear-shuriken) Insight (able to discern how machines work. Limited Technomancy.)

Jenny: Flint. Gem location: right eye. Weapon: Eye laser. (reminiscent of sailor moon). When conditions are met, able to enter an 'excited' (superpowered) state.

Sour Cream: Calcite. Gem location: right ear. Weapon: Glow Stick. Not very good for fighting with. Uses it as a conductor's baton. Funky flow (dream-walking. Limited ability to read/influence people. Basically increased luck).

Buck/Jenny: Feldspar. Weapon: Laser Shuriken. Technomancy.

Jenny/Sour Cream: Marble. Weapon: Laser Staff. Funky Flow.

Sour Cream/Buck: Limestone. Weapon: Metal Staff. Technomancy, Funky Flow.

Buck/Jenny/Sour Cream: Rhyolite. Glowing Metal Nunchucks with laser beam for chain connecting two together (Nunchucks look really cool in movies, but they're not always the most effective weapon in real life. Kind of like how Rhyolite looks really cool, but isn't all that great at fighting, themselves). Technomancy, Funky Flow.

Lars: Axinite. Gem location: Tongue. Weapon: Baseball bat.

Rhyolite/Axinite: Granite. Weapon: Metal bat that can spawn its own laser balls as ammunition.

* * *

…and that's all she wrote. At any rate, if anyone else wants to write fic/make art/etc on this verse or any alternate universe of it, you're more than welcome to do so. As for me, this was a four-shot. I'm done. Hope you enjoyed it.


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